It did not exactly occur to me that Parent Talk 101 was to focus particularly on communication with young adults/teenage children. But that did not get me disappointed. I think it is necessary for parents to be ready way ahead of the actual battle. This is what we did before I gave birth to my son. From learning how to be BabyWise to attending to childbirth classes. These helped us a lot to conceptualize the kind of parents we want to be. It is our first and we knew we had to start right.

There are a few things that I did not exactly agree with Pastor Clem (some minor stuff on child rearing), but there were a whole bunch that the hubby and I did agree with him on. Training up a child isn’t exactly as easy as motivating him or her to get into a Fastin diet. It does involve relational parenting. As with the previous parenting seminars the hubby and I attended, being intentional parents is a non-negotiable aspect of effective parenting.

It was the second time I heard Pastor Clem Guillermo quoted People Making by Virginia Satir, which I will post in a bit. Meanwhile, I hope to share what he spoke on Understanding Yourself as a Parent.

He first identified the first Ineffective Parenting Style. Permissive Parenting – children run roughshod over their parents. Pampering is under this category. Pastor Clem defined it as doing for children what children can do for themselves.

He particularly set out examples that actually struck me. The examples he mentioned were:

• Waking children up in the morning.
• Looking for children’s misplaced item.
• Taking most household chores
• Allowing children to disregard rules
• Giving children special privileges

The first example struck me especially. Although, my four year old son is a little too young to be in a particular schedule (we are just about to start with formal home school), my mindset has always been that I would be responsible for him to wake up at a particular time. Pastor Clem reiterates that this does not teach them to be responsible. The best thing to do is give them an alarm clock.

As for looking for my son’s misplaced item. It helps that I do not have the luxury of time to follow after his mess. This somehow forced me to train him early on. He learned packing away his toys as early as less than a year old. The advantage now is, although he can be just like any regular toddler, notorious for being such a messy creature, he easily gets it when I remind him about the toys he left on the table or on the floor. But more often than not, he does it by himself. If he forgets, he got distracted and just needed to be reminded.

At four years old, I should say that he is doing well in this. Even better than the hubby does, believe it or not. My son is even the one who reminds him, from time to time. I am proud of my son, to say the least.Early training really helps and it certainly has nothing to do with the genes. For one I have to make it work. I have no choice. I have no help, I chose to be nanny-less, I single-handedly juggle things from my end and I stood firm that my circumstance would never be an excuse for me to fail as a mother.

The parenting seminar gave me both valuable insights and validated how the hubby and I are training up our son. Parent Talk 102 will be held in SM North this coming October 2009. I will be posting details very soon.